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Daniel Snyder to ESPN: Redskin means 'honor and respect'

The name of his Washington NFL club means honor and respect and can be seen otherwise only when taken out of context, Daniel Snyder told ESPN Tuesday. "A Redskin is a football player," the owner of the

The name of his NFL club means honor and respect and can be viewed otherwise only when taken out of context, Daniel Snyder told ESPN on Tuesday.

"A Redskin is a football player," the Washington Redskins owner said. "A Redskin is our fans. The Washington Redskin fan base represents honor, represents respect, represents pride, hopefully winning. And it's a positive. Taken out of context, if you take things out of context all over the place, but in this particular case, it is what it is. It's very obvious."

The interview was conducted by John Barr for an Outside the Lines special on the team name controversy set to run Sept. 2. ESPN ran outtakes from the interview Tuesday on SportsCenter. Snyder, who rarely speaks on the name issue, made some of the same points in a Monday interview on the team's flagship radio station that he owns.

Barr asked Snyder what he wants people to know to understand his position. "It's what the name actually means," Snyder said. "I would like people to know the history, whether it's Lone Star Dietz, whether it's Walter 'Blackie' Wetzel in Montana, it's just historical truths.

"And I'd like them to understand, as I think most do, that the name really means honor and respect. We sing Hail to the Redskins. We don't say hurt anybody. We sing 'Hail to the Redskins, Braves on the warpath, Fight for old DC.' We only sing it when we score touchdowns. That's the problem, because last season we didn't sing it quite enough as we would have liked to."

The team fight song now says: "Beat 'em, swamp 'em, touchdown! Let the points soar." The original lyrics said: "Scalp 'em, swamp 'em, We will take 'em big score. Read 'em, weep 'em, touchdown! We want heap more." The original lyrics were written by Corrine Griffith, wife of George Preston Marshall, the franchise's original owner, who named the team.

Barr summarized some of the other points Snyder made in the ESPN interview, including that Snyder said he has heard no criticism from other NFL owners or from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and that Snyder is convinced from visits to reservations that the name is not offensive to Native Americans.

Snyder told Barr that he is mindful of and sensitive to criticism that his Original Americans Foundation to help Native communities is a public relations stunt. Barr said that Snyder told him that he believes such criticism will go away over time.

The late owner of the Washington Redskins, George Preston Marshall, at his desk in 1935. He gave the team its nickname that many consider racist.(Photo: Associated Press)

It has not gone away yet: Jacqueline Pata, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, and Ray Halbritter, Oneida Indian Nation representative, issued a joint statement after Snyder's radio appearance.

"He doesn't understand a simple fact: No matter how much of his fortune he spends trying to convince the world that slurring people of color is acceptable, it is not," the statement said. "The more he clings to this racist epithet, the more he walks in the footsteps of his predecessor, the segregationist George Preston Marshall, who originally gave the team this hideous name."